All war is a vast enterprise.[1]  The two World Wars were fought all over the globe and affected almost all peoples, regardless of whether their own countries joined the fighting.  Representing in art such gigantic passages of history poses all sorts of challenges. 

            A common solution is to focus attention on a small group of people involved in some kind of significant action.  Audiences need characters who are interesting to them, people with whom they can identify or sympathize.  For example, the “Day of Days” episode of “Band of Brothers” is far more compelling than “The Longest Day.” 

            Movies about war at sea can meet this need: even the largest ship is still a single unit; crews are small groups of [until recently] men from varied backgrounds and with varied temperaments who must learn to work together to survive and triumph.  “The Cruel Sea” (dir. Charles Frend,1953) offers an excellent example. 

Nicholas Monsarrat (1910-1979) started out as a journalist with a love of sailing; served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War as an officer on some of the “little ships” (corvettes, frigates) that guarded convoys of merchant ships in the Atlantic; and then became a writer after the war.  His novel The Cruel Sea (1951) accurately summarized his own war experience.  It became a hit and was turned into a movie. 

Charles Frend (1909-1977) graduated from Oxford and went right into the movie business.  He spent ten years editing other directors’ movies before he got the chance to direct himself.[2]  Since this opportunity came with the outbreak of the Second World War, Frend’s early experience included a couple of propaganda-for-the-Good-Cause movies.  One of these was the sea story “San Demetrio London” (1943).[3]  After the war, he made the British-stiff-upper-lip classic “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948).  Put the two movies together and Frend became the natural choice to direct “The Cruel Sea.”  He was an ordinary director, not a great director, but sometimes ordinary people can still achieve extraordinary things.[4] 

Thucydides tells us that “war is a stern teacher; in depriving [people] of the power of easily satisfying their daily wants, it brings most people’s minds down to the level of their actual circumstances.”  So it is with the sailors in this story.  Much of the service–herding merchant ships back and forth across the Atlantic–is monotonous and unglamorous.  The men are away from home for months at a time, sometimes returning to find that loved ones have been lost to them through war, accident, or loneliness.  At sea there is constant strain.  The North Atlantic is vast and violent, and men must stand their watches in all weather and at all hours.  The U-boats—the “hump-backed death below”–are hidden and deadly, and one of the ships is lost with most of the hands when torpedoed.   Some men crumble under stress.  Lieutenant Lockhart—Monsarrat—emerges from the war stronger, self-disciplined, self-confident, and with a deep respect for the sailors and the Navy personified by his wartime commander, Captain Erickson.

You can—and should–watch the movie at  Bing Videos 

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[1] See: cliche definition – Search (bing.com) 

[2] The learning-by-doing approach to becoming a director preceded the film school approach without worse movies getting made.  Just saying. 

[3] San Demetrio London – Wikipedia  It’s sort of the reverse of the backstory to Conrad’s Lord Jim. 

[4] Which is what both “The Cruel Sea” and Britain’s story in the Second World War are all about.